Finally! I’m writing down (yes, I chose this word because I need to dig up my memory.. it’s 3-weeks late by the way.. haha) this last chapter of Musa’s monthly development. All of previous-months notes is available on my IG / FB. We only missed his 1-month-old note, but we still did posting a picture of the return of Papa’s lunch-box to celebrate. Mama was off from the kitchen during the first month and Papa sometimes prepared his own bento 😀

It’s hard to realize that your baby is not a baby anymore by this time. Dilemma comes more intense such as “I still wanna have a baby, but I don’t wanna be too busy again” and in another way “I wanna him grows up quickly, so we can do many more things together”. Now I know why human keeps having more children even though it makes him / her a worrysome all the time. Hahaha..

Okay, let’s start to review.

Road to be a screen-free toddler

Musa has been set to be screen-free since 10 months and one last month (11 to 12 months) it was quite be successful. Thanks to little hafidz Musa and Mrs. Fauziah for reminding us. Stories of those two persons get about to shock me. I read the bad effect of those “blink-blink” display to baby’s brain beforehand, but sadly I couldn’t do more than cut the duration of his watch. Most of the time, we turned on screen to distract him from crying or from bothering our works. Looked like quote “Housework can wait, but your baby can’t” went wrong. Hahaha.

That’s okay to be friends with screen.. as long as it’s under your control, baby. Uh yeahhh! :))

Changing this habit was surprisingly very easy because Musa can’t ask to watch video yet :D. I was thinking that I could sort the videos in a playlist (some songs have been removed) that make screen-time a little bit useful, but Musa is only interested to certain videos of nursery rhymes. When sister Maryam shows up in the screen reciting Quran verses, he runs away. LOL. Anyway, in the screen time, I never let him stoned for so long without interaction. Between 9 to 10 months, he has been able to respond (in his language) such as “hmm.. hmm..” if I invite him to discuss the content of  the video, so I think face-to-face communication still play the more important role compared to the screen itself. No matter what we talk about, baby needs to listen to our voice beyond everything, especially the voices with parentese style.

Well, that’s my choice to limit screen for my baby. Nobody can make sure how long this screen-free mission will survive. We still make exception sometimes, like when I needed to cut his hair and made him stayed calm. The videos could save us from ‘disaster’ :)) Screen isn’t always bad. I just want to prevent Musa for getting addicted. I proudly admit that I build vocabulary of kids’ words from nursery videos and teach good habits in daily life with the songs. Thanks for YouTube!

Here is a good guide to use screen wisely. Keep it to myself too!

5 Myths About Young Children and Screen Media Infographic (Source: Zero to Three)

Continue reading →